Should you seek out guaranteed SEO services?
Companies that offer guaranteed SEO results
I’ve seen so many SEO companies that offer guaranteed SEO rankings or “#1 rankings.” Anyone who’s worth their salt in the SEO industry knows that this is not the way it works, and it should be a red flag when shopping for a reputable SEO company.
In fact, most top Sacramento SEO firms and SEO consulting companies do not guarantee search engine rankings. The best advice we can give you is to stay far, far away from any business who mentions any “guaranteed” rankings or “guaranteed #1 search engine rankings.”
They often promise #1 rankings or something similar to entice you to sign up with them. You should be very wary of anybody promising “guaranteed rankings,” or any quick, easy results. It just doesn’t work that way. This is more of a (somewhat sleazy) sales tactic.
You can never guarantee rankings, especially in competitive niches. The reality is, you can only have an educated guess on how quickly keywords might be to rank.
‘Gurus’ are trying to sell you something
The gurus are telling you a bunch of lies. Though there are some legitimate big names in the SEO field, there are many that (in my opinion) just don’t get it, and are often just trying to sell you their next product, course or ebook.
Most of these “gurus” are trying to sell you something, and their real specialty is that of selling products. Sure there are some real experts out there that teach this stuff and show you the real deal, but the vast majority of people selling marketing products are just trying to make money selling you the next big thing.
The reality is, there are a set of principles that don’t change. Sure the technology surrounding these foundational principles change, but the underlying principles of marketing, direct response marketing, inbound marketing, etc. do not change.
Often you will see advertisements or sales pitches from these gurus that entice you with extraordinary results in a relatively small period. Beyond gurus trying to sell their info products, you also get digital marketing agencies using the same sales tactics.
Reasons why there is no such thing as guaranteed SEO results, and why SEO firms shouldn’t advertise it
1. Search engine results are naturally volatile
If you search for a keyword while you are here locally in Roseville, the search engine results may give you a particular company or website to be number 1. However, it may show up differently depending on your location. For instance, if you drive 30 miles to a Sacramento, you may very well see different results.
Also if you search the same terms on your mobile device compared to a desktop device you may see different search results. For example, what was number one on your desktop computer may show number two or three on your mobile device; or vice versa. Also depending on your personal search history, you will see different search results than someone else does. Also sometimes even if you refresh the search results you’ll see a different ordering.
This is entirely normal. Search results are volatile. Google will vary the search results to test different listings to see which one is best suited to be position number 1234 and so on. Also depending on your search history device and location and other factors, you will get different search results.
The point is there is no such thing as number one rankings. Sure you can have number one rankings more so than somebody else, but number one rankings are never guaranteed. The search engine results themselves are volatile of their own accord. This is the design that Google has implemented in their search engine, and other search engine companies have also applied. They do this to test different search engine results positions, to make their search engine results better Over time.
Just because of this fact alone, no SEO company can offer guaranteed search engine rankings. This is not possible
2. It’s always been a red flag
Spammy SEOs have given the Industry a bad name
SEO nowadays is such an important aspect to any businesses success online, and locally. Most everyone uses a search engine to find companies products and services. It makes sense that SEO is going to be a foundation for any business.
It’s such a shame that over the years spamming SEO companies have developed a bad reputation in this industry. They have done this by offering guaranteed rankings, and usually, don’t deliver or worse harm the client’s website in business.
Examples of spammy guaranteed SEO
- guaranteed listing in the major search engines guaranteed higher rankings
- guaranteed first page results
- search engine optimization software that guarantees you fast and easy, natural links
- guaranteed search traffic and #1 top rankings
- securing number one rankings or you don’t pay
- etc
You may notice last one where Summit spamming SEO companies will guarantee number one rankings, or you don’t have to pay them per month. This sounds very enticing, and it seems like you can’t lose. However often these spamming SEO companies will choose the keywords themselves which will be very easy to rank keywords. They may be keywords that don’t help your business at all but were simply just very noncompetitive. This is a manipulative sales technique that here at social patterns we would never implement. We believe it is unethical to trick clients into getting a deal. Is taking advantage of clients that don’t know a lot about SEO, and it is a shame to see other companies do this.
Google warns against it
There is a Google help article entitled do you need an SEO? Here social patterns, we agree with everything that Google has laid out, and we highly recommend that anybody who’s looking for an SEO company read this before shopping around for an SEO affirm.
Here’s a quote from that Google support article that explains that nobody can guarantee number one search engine rankings:
No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
(Source)
It is unethical (we don’t have control)
At the end of the day, it’s an ethical issue. How can anyone guarantee something that is inherently non-guaranteed?
Beyond the fact that search engine results are very volatile like discussed above, Google is the ultimate authority to decide which web page ranks for particular keywords. This is something out of your control.
For example, say a client wanted to rank his e-commerce store that sold magnets. Say he wanted to rank number one for magnetism. Assuming that this wasn’t a super competitive keyword, let’s say that he wanted to rank his product pages that are selling magnets, number one for magnetism.
Well if you look at Google currently, Wikipedia is ranking number one for that spot. This tells us something. This is telling us that it may be impossible to rank his product pages number one for that keyword because the fact that Wikipedia’s rank number one shows us that the user intent of this keyword is likely to be informational. You cannot rank the page that does not adequately serve the user’s intent. That is just one example to show you that some keywords are not possible to rank number one, let alone guaranteed By an SEO company. At the end of the day it comes down to user intent, and Google has the last say on who ranks for particular keywords.
It is the wrong tactic For SEO companies to offer guaranteed search engine rankings. Instead, SL companies should be focusing on ensuring that though provide the best service possible in the best advice to grow the client’s websites traffic and overall search engine exposure.
Also, it’s worth noting that many times you can look at the keyword and have a pretty good idea of how difficult it would be to rank. Personally me as an SEO, I may give it a percentage like I’m 95% certain I can rank for this keyword. However, I would never guarantee that keyword rankings, For all the reasons mentioned above.
At the end of the day, here social patterns we do like to guarantee that our clients are happy. also when clients take our advice or allow us to do the SEO work on their website, we guarantee higher search engine exposure and traffic. We also guarantee that our recommendations and SEO work is entirely white hat and will not result in any search engine penalties.
To me, this last guarantee is one of the best guarantees any SEO company can make. The reason is search engine penalties can be detrimental to your business.
3. Good SEO is about performance, not rankings!
There is so much more to SEO thank rankings. The “rankings” mindset is somewhat of an old school way of looking at SEO. These days it’s about overall traffic and revenue.
Beyond the fact that you should not trust anyone guaranteeing search engine rankings, you should not be in the trap of thinking regarding “#1 rankings.” This is an outdated way of thinking about SEO.
Did you know that long tail keywords typically make up a huge portion of all traffic that goes to most website?
For this reason, alone, a #1 ranking for a particular keyword may not be your primary strategy that you focus on. If you are not very seasoned with Search engine optimization, you should leave it up to the SEO professionals to guide you in picking the right strategy for your business. That’s okay if you are not! Focus on your core business and let the Social Patterns team here in Roseville handle the search engine optimization.
We call these ego metrics. Several #1 ranking are important and sought after for certain keywords, sure, but it isn’t the entire strategy. The goal is to get as much targeted traffic as possible and to convert into paying customers. This involves focusing on more content that targets several keywords, rather than just focusing on a select few keywords.
This is the future of Search engine marketing.